rainy Sunday morning and a stupid game!

You can't believe how much rain we have this week! I cannot think of a day this week that is dry. The ponds in the Common are over filled, most paths are under water and we also have some new ponds! My garden is water logged! The pond is nearly filled up to the top and can you imagine the mud my shelties bring in? YUK! Go away rain! Give me some snow! If this rain continues, I think I better start thinking to build an Ark!

this is one of the over filled ponds in the Common:

the paths under water:

and some new ponds made this week:

The dogs still get their walk everyday in the rain and mud, you can imagine everytime when we got back from walk, I have hell out of job to clean them up!

Luckily, our usual Tuesday and Thursday training is indoor, part of the indoor school in Pacheham had a pool of muddy patch! So, we had a course set up to go around the swamp but I nearly fell in the swamp once!

Yesterday, we had Dawn Weaver's training day in the rain. I've booked to train in the morning and afternoon with three dogs. I came down with a terrible cold on Thursday evening, so I am not in the best of health but I am agility addict. I love to train with Dawn so I go ahead and train in the rain. The weather in the morning was not good at all, we have patchy rain here and there and at one point, we have to stop for about 20 minutes because of the heavy rain pour! We were a bit lucky in the afternoon, it was mainly dry with a bit of drizzle here and there.

It was an interesting training day, we learned pre curving and layering. Dawm set up some easy sequences to start with but I wasn't fit enough to concentrate so I made mistake all the time. Sizzle is an honest dog, he tried so hard for me and I think he did so well in the rain. I have to put his rain coat on and kept him under the DW from rain. Poor little soul wasn't happy at all. I was very surprised and happy how he handled the layering. We have a sequence that we have to layer a jump and the dog have to weave independently, Sizzle did that beautifully and stayed in the weave all the way through. For a young dog like him, I am amazed. Then, we have a sequence of round the three jumps into the weave but DW in between, so we have to stay this side of the DW and the dog has to weave on their own. If you know how much Sizzle loves his DW, you can imagine how hard I have to push him to take the weave instead of the DW. He finally got my message at the thrid go, so not bad at all and I, again, very impressed with him staying in the weave while I run along the other side of the DW.

The pre-curving exercise probably is the hardest for me to handle. It is so much depend on the handler's shoulder. I made so much mistakes with Saturn but I am learning. I just wanted this rain to go away so I can practise more!

and this is the only video we had from training as it was too wet to take the camera out:

This morning, we have a heavy down pour again. The weatherman said we will have 3cm of rain! I haven't get the dogs out yet. I am hoping the rain will stop at some point so I can quickly take them out for a quick stroll. At the mean time, me and the dogs are practising some new tricks and this is one of them:

Rain please stop!!